40d Talk:Olivine

What makes olivine special enough to warrant an article? Sure, it spawns platinum, but olivine only shows up in gabbro, which already contains platinum, making that point moot. VengefulDonut 07:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

It spawns platinum, but it's hardly the only source. VengefulDonut 00:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

There has been no response from anyone, including the page's author, so I assume this page is not supported. Tagging for deletion. VengefulDonut 00:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I had responded to you the same day you posted that first comment, but not here (actually, I thought on your talk page, VD - can't find it now, maybe it got lost.) It certainly seems that your 2nd post is responding to a response from somewhere. I'll try to recreate my position:

Olivine is not nearly as notable as many other stones, but the very points you make at the top of the page are what makes it stand out from truly generic and useless stones like, say, microcline. Your remarks are what makes it "remarkable", if only in a literal sense. The purpose of a wiki page is to summarize information - anyone who knows the various stones knows that if you hit microcline, that tells you absolutely nothing. That is truly unremarkable. If a newbie strikes olivine and looks it up, they should be able to find out that 1) it may contain platinum, one of only a few sources, and 2) that it also represents an existing, larger gabbro layer - which is valuable to know in and of itself due to the ores that are found only in that stone. That olivine is not just another microcline.

How else is a newbie supposed to know the very facts you toss out? Surf the entire wiki at random? Intuitively say "I've hit something called Olivine - I should look up platinum and gabbro!"? Inter-connectivity and reflexive flow of information is what makes a wiki useful, linking lesser (but not insignificant) items with larger.

There are many stones that give zero information, that are, truly, pointless and unremarkable. Olivine is not one of them.--Albedo 01:37, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

By this reasoning, chromite should also be remarkable, no? Maybe serpentine, too. And cryolite. All of these spawn in only one place, as do many more. We have to draw the line, somewhere. Originally, the line was drawn at "has a special use or forms a layer". Later, someone added an exception for kimberlite since it is the only source of diamonds.

It seems you have decided that "lets you know which layer you're digging into" makes a stone significant. By this criteria, over half of the stones which have no use would deserve their own page. In my opinion, this makes it a bad criteria to use; especially since that particular information is already contained on the stone page. Unless you want to instate this type of policy, (2) should not even have been mentioned in this discussion.

As for (1), the issue here is more of a "what good does it do?" problem. From the perspective of a person who is interested in platinum and gets lead to olivine as a spawn location, there are two scenarios:

• a) the olivine link leads to a redirect that sends them to a table which contains all the information they didn't know about olivine.
• b) the olivine link sends them to the olivine page, which tells them olivine spawns in gabbro (they didnt know) and that olivine contains platinum (they did know).

Why am I talking about such a specific example? Because there are no links to olivine except in pages that talk about native platinum and there is no reason any should appear. Chromite is in the same boat.

Rather than deciding arbitrarily deciding you want a page on some rock, decide objectively on the criteria you want to use to determine which rocks deserve pages and follow through all the way. Keep in mind that there are a lot of rocks. VengefulDonut 03:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)